Topic: Boardgames

[Delthos]

I played my First game of Settlers of Catan the other day. Great game and I caught on real fast but it quickly became competitive and now no one wants to play hahaha

Except for cooperative games like Shadows over Camelot, I don't see how you couldn't get at least a little bit competitive. It's a great game and its a shame if you don't play it again.

When you played did you use the basic board set-up rules with the set places for the tiles and numbers? I suggest you try it again using the random setup rules. Makes for a much different play experience.

[Delthos]

This is related to boardgames so I'm posting it. Days of Wonder, the makers of Ticket to Ride are giving away their iPhone version of Ticket to Ride Pocket for free for the next 5 days. They are celebrating the release of the iPhone 5. Just go to the Apple Store and download it. If you have an iPhone and have ever been interested in trying out Ticket to Ride there is no better way to try it out than this. It's a great game.

[Siberius]

I also just played my first two games of Settlers.

Must now have!

[BAWTRM]

I'll trade you mine for three sheep and a batch of clay.

[Delthos]

I'm sure this comes up a lot in your game, "Anyone got wood for sheep?!" 

[George]

Dominion
Discworld
Small World
Robo Rally
Settlers of Catan

[BAWTRM]

I'm sure this comes up a lot in your game, "Anyone got wood for sheep?!"

Well in Dutch there is no language equivalent of 'wood' though we do have an expression where we describe a large bosom as a 'stack of wood'.

Sheep are however often termed 'shoarma' (shawarma) complete with Turkish/Morrocan accent.

MMMMmmmmmmmmmm.....shoarma

[oak_prince]

I'm sure this comes up a lot in your game, "Anyone got wood for sheep?!"

Houserule: Anyone who is still making "wood for sheep" jokes or turning the cities into swastikas after their third game has to drink a quart of antifreeze.

[Delthos]

You guys are just no fun! It does seem that it is most fun to get the newbs to the game to say it. The fun never ends when you get them to say "Yeah, I've got wood for sheep." after asking "Any one have some wood, I've got some sheep?" It just doesn't stop being funny. I guess we are just too immature.

[BAWTRM]

You know I've fiddled around a lot with those wooden board pieces but I never found out you could make a swastika out of them!

[oak_prince]

You guys are just no fun! It does seem that it is most fun to get the newbs to the game to say it. The fun never ends when you get them to say "Yeah, I've got wood for sheep." after asking "Any one have some wood, I've got some sheep?" It just doesn't stop being funny. I guess we are just too immature.

Alright, you don't have to drink the antifreeze.

Just don't repeatedly demand trades for a resource that's rare that game when it's obvious that no one is going to give it up. That's my ultimate Catan pet peeve. 

[BAWTRM]

Just don't repeatedly demand trades for a resource that's rare that game when it's obvious that no one is going to give it up. That's my ultimate Catan pet peeve. 

That's an important part as well. Just don't make silly trade offers. If a resource is truly rare you should offer a sizeable trade. At some time people are going to pick up on it to pursue a different strategy; get the longest continuous road or those advancement cards maybe. People who only focus on towns and villages usually lose out.

[zakalwe]

Don't know if it has been mentioned yet, but Smallworld is a fun boardgame.

A good tongue in cheek, dice less, quick to play game.

[oak_prince]

Smallworld is great. It's always amusing to see what trait/race combos come up - Bivoucking Trolls and Flying Wizards being my two favorites thus far. I haven't tried the expansion yet, sadly.

I tried Battlestar Galactica over the weekend and it was a lot of fun. It's similar to Shadows Over Camelot and Arkham Horror in that the game is playing itself against the players and similar to Shadows in that at there's a traitor in the group.

[commandant]

I'm sure this comes up a lot in your game, "Anyone got wood for sheep?!"

the problem is solved if you use timber and wool

[wissenlander]

I picked up Space Hulk: Death Angel when Borders went out of business last year.  I still haven't played it.  It was on major sale, otherwise I never would've gotten it to begin with.  Still seems like a waste of money at this point...

[Delthos]

I can't believe I forgot about and no body else mentioned it, but Zombies and all of its expansions from Twilight Creations is a great game. If you have the choice go with the 2nd edition of the base game. They used improved artwork on all the components, and the action cards have been updated, the heart and bullet counters are different colors which makes them much easier to tell apart, and it comes in a bigger box to put the expansions in. A classic game that captures the feel of Romero perfectly.

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/en/boardgames/zombies.html

Also some other really fun card games that we've been playing lately are the B-Movie card games from Z-Man games. You take the part of a producer/director trying to make the best B-Movie. The cards are great, they poke fun at lots of well know movies and movie tropes. Some of the funnest versions are the original Grave Robbers from Outer Space, Kung-fu Samurai and Giant Monster Island, Bell-bottomed Baddassess and the Mean Streets of Funk, and Bush Whackin' Varmints out of Sergio's Butte. Each version is themed around the type of movies in the title of the game. You can get them for a bargain bottom price at Miniature Market, depending on the set, up to 60-70% off MSRP.

http://www.zmangames.com/cardgames/index.htm

The other is Blood Bowl Team Manager card game from Fantasy Flight Games. You take the part of a team manager guiding your team through 5 weeks of a Bloodbowl season trying to be the team with the most fans at the end of the game. Each week you put your players up on the Spike Magazine highlights that are dealt out onto the table trying to beat your opponents to gain the fans and other rewards like team upgrades and star players. The idea is that you are providing the details on the teams in the highlight articles for Spike Magazine. The game comes with Dwarves, Wood Elves, Humans, Skaven, Orcs, and Chaos. Each team has it's own feel and style. The Skaven are fast cheaters, fast in the context of this game is that they allow you to go through your deck to get stronger players to play. Chaos are cheating bruisers. Humans are fairly rounded all around players. Lots of fun. They've got a new expansion coming out next year with Dark Elves, Vampires, and Zombies.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=130&enmi=Blood%20Bowl:%20Team%20Manager

[Cannonofdoom]

Played some Pandemic when by brother came down for a visit. It was a good time. We lost twice and won once.

[Bildskoene Bengtsson]

Me and my girlfriend must have played about 300 games of Settlers with friends and family. The two of us got so much better than the rest and so competitive that we had to start keeping scores over time. I've got a wooping 10,4 and she's got 10,3 in average points (we're playing to 13 with one of the expansions). I think we've still got a book lying around with all the stats. We found out quite soon that the player who is last to place his City ususally wins so we started to keep track of that too.

Edit: Oh, and no trades between players. It might work for some people, but being the oldest of four brothers I know the value of keeping the things to argue about down to a minimum.

[oak_prince]

I can't believe I forgot about and no body else mentioned it, but Zombies and all of its expansions from Twilight Creations is a great game. If you have the choice go with the 2nd edition of the base game. They used improved artwork on all the components, and the action cards have been updated, the heart and bullet counters are different colors which makes them much easier to tell apart, and it comes in a bigger box to put the expansions in. A classic game that captures the feel of Romero perfectly.

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/en/boardgames/zombies.html

Have you played Last Night on Earth yet? It's pretty tactical and plays on a lot of horror movie tropes.

Zombies is pretty bad. I'd actually warn my W-E brothers against buying it before they've tried it for themselves. The mechanics are pretty uninspired - you move 1d6 and if you bump into a zombie it you kill it on a roll of 4+. It fails at being a proper "beer and pretzels" game because it can drag on for hours and requires a lot of space to play.

[Delthos]

I guess we all have our own opinions on what is good! In my group we all like how Zombies plays. It's just random chaos for the most part. You are correct it can require a lot of space depending on how people decide to place the map tiles as they come up. How long it drags on really depends on how cut throat everyone gets with each other. In my circle of gamers, we really enjoy the aspect of screwing each other over with the special action cards. The more you screw each other over, the longer the game takes. There are ways to speed up the game though. Some are to take out some of the building tiles and some of the generic map tiles. This will get the Helipad out earlier, of course we always like to randomly shuffle the helipad into the bottom five tiles of the map tile deck as well. That way you don't know exactly when the helipad is going to arrive. You can also reduce the number of zombies you have to have in your collection to win.

One of the variants of zombies may be more to your liking. I'm thinking of MidEvil. It uses skeletons instead of zombies. It is essentially Army of Darkness as a boardgame. The idea of the game is to get to the graveyard and collect the Necronomicon and bring it back to the altar. It's got some rule changes to make the game faster. You add your current number of life to your movement roll, so you move much quicker. You also have three different colors of skeletons. You use these skeletons that you collect as your bullets. They are worth one, two, and three points. You kill skeletons on a 4+ and can use your skeletons to modify the roll with their points adding to the roll. In addition to the basic rules getting you moving quicker, the end game comes quicker as the Necronomicon is always getting closer to the goal. This because you try to steal the Necronomicon from the person currently holding it. So it continuously moves closer to the altar and if you get killed you respawn at the altar and don't have very far to go to get the Necronomicon. You can also win by having 30 points worth of skeletons but as you have to use skeletons as bullets, it's very difficult to win that way. Other than that it plays pretty much the same.

[TexasYankee]

My votes:

Castle Panic - Great with kids, still fun with adults. You can learn it in 30 seconds. Get the "Wizard Tower" expansion!

Pandemic - Played it twice, pretty good game.

Arkham Horror - We have a group that plays it faithfully every weekend, although I've never played it. My daughter got in on the game last weekend, and she enjoyed it. There are about a billion expansions, so it has epic potential.

BSG - I hate the politics. Just put me in a viper and I'll fly around blasting cylons. Don't like "traitor" games.

Bang! - Card game, quick to learn, beer makes it that much more fun.

Puzzlestrike - My daughter became so good at this game the rest of my group doesn't allow her to play her character anymore, must choose randomly. Never played it myself, but my daughter wants it for Christmas.

Warhammer Quest - Never had more fun playing a board game, but it also an RPG with no DM, you just follow the book. Have your miniatures on hand, this game is a blast. Just don't be afraid to die! I lost six Bretonnian knights before my seventh one made it to third level. 

[Cannonofdoom]

I got Ticket To Ride and Settlers of Catan for Christmas. Settlers is super fun, but my wife, who isn't a gamer, absolutely loves Ticket To Ride. Both are great.

[Delthos]

If your wife likes Ticket to Ride, check out the variants like Ticket to Ride Europe and some of the other ones once it becomes old hat. You could even try the 1910 expansion for the base game. They add some new rules that are very interesting. TtR: Europe adds tunnels and train stations. Tunnels are routes that could cost more train cards to build, up to three more. Train Stations allow you to use one of your opponent's routes to complete one of your tickets. The thing about the train stations is that each player has only three to build and you gain 4 points for each one that you don't build. You have to weigh the value of using one to complete a ticket and the points you will get by not building one. Ideally you will use one to complete multiple tickets. If she really wants to get good at the game, check out the iPhone Ticket to Ride apps. They are very reasonably priced at $1.99 each. They are the full game. The 1910 and 1912 expansions are available for $.99 as in app purchases. It's a great way to develop her skills and strategies.

[BAWTRM]

This weekend a bunch of friends came over for a ~day of Twilight Imperium. I had studied the rules in advance.

6-player game
Most of the optional rules from the 1st expansion were used
I don't believe we used anything from the 2nd expansion
Giant 4 ring galaxy

They came over at 11:00 AM, we finished at 3:30 AM, and much fun was had. Game ended before the full 10 VP. 2 players got 9 VP, me and another first timer at the game got 8 VP, the other 2 got less.

In the end I went on the offensive just a tad late (also because one player screwed me over, made me gain War Sun technology 2 rounds later than planned, I got him back though  ). Turned out everyone needed the Mecatol system for their secret objective but in the end only 2 of them succeeded. I came really close, I was confident my powerful fleets (+stack of carefully accumulated action cards) would be able to crush the defending forces of Mecatol and repulse/crush both other adjacent fleets, but I simply ran out of time!

Good fun, but clearly no game for an afternoon (I had fully anticipated the game ending deep in the night).